By Paul Cohen One of the most striking things about Donald Trump’s presidency is just how surprised Americans were that it happened at all. On the very eve of the election in November 2016, despite polls’ margins of error showing him within striking distance of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s victory was unthinkable, a scenario too fantastic to contemplate (reportedly, even by… Read more »
By Aaron Boyes and Sean Graham This is the 9th time we have convened to do one of these 100 Years Later brackets and it’s always a lot of fun to go through the list of events and consider what could be a contender to win. Most years it has been hard to determine if there any favourites, but as… Read more »
Erin Isaac In 2006 Leonard Pitt observed in his guidebook Walks Through Lost Paris that “one would have no idea that this was the spot where Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre was launched.”[1] The spot to which he referred, pictured above, is Paris’s l’Eglise Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a gothic cathedral that has become a well known “dark tourist” destination for its role in… Read more »
Alban Bargain-Villéger This is the second and final part of the diary I kept during a research trip to Groix island in December 2018. The first episode covered my journey to Paris and the train ride to Lorient. The following pages begin on the evening of my arrival, after a rough, though bearable, ferry ride across the Courreaux Strait. December… Read more »
Alban Bargain-Villéger This post consists of excerpts from the research diary I kept during my research trip to Groix, France, in December 2018. Groix is a small island off the coast of Brittany, France’s westernmost region. This investigation into Groix’s understudied past is part of a long-haul project on three small northern European islands that I presented in a previous… Read more »
Thomas Vennes Early on the morning of the 4th of May 1916, a military column in French West Africa set out to quell a rebellion. Their mission was one small part of World War I in Africa, about which little is said in Canada. This post helps illuminate the under-appreciated global and colonial ramifications of the First World War. The… Read more »
Alban Bargain-Villéger On April 23 and May 7, 2017, French voters will be electing the eighth president of the Fifth Republic. In the last three months, much ink has been spilled over how decisive this year’s election will be. However, while this campaign has indeed been marked by several violent confrontations and scandalous revelations, its dynamics and the themes it… Read more »
Alban Bargain-Villéger It all happened sometime in late March 2003, during the first days of the invasion of Iraq. My then-roommate and I were watching CNN’s coverage of the Battle of Nasiriyah in our Vancouver living-room, when my friend suddenly decided to break the silence that had been reigning for about fifteen minutes. “I’m telling you, dude, there’s going to… Read more »
By Geoff Read One of the courses I teach at Huron University College is called “Current Crises in Historical Context,” wherein we use the tools of historical analysis to try to shed light on the origins of some of the crises confronting the world. This year we are looking at topics such as the Russian annexation of the Crimea, the… Read more »
By Alban Bargain-Villéger In the wake of the January 7-9 attacks in France, millions of tweets, millions of demonstrators, thousands of heads of state, intellectuals, and celebrities of all kinds not only condemned the murders of seventeen people (including four as a result of an anti-Semitic hostage taking linked to the other shootings), but also praised Charlie Hebdo’s courage in… Read more »
